[Mars] the Sorcerer of Rhiannon - Leigh Brackett

5/21/2018 [Mars] the Sorcerer of Rhiannon - Leigh Brackett

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The Sorcerer of Rhiannon

He had been without water for three days. The last of his concentrated food, spared by the sa

that had caught him away from his ship and driven him beyond all hope of finding it, rattled u

in his belt pouch, because his throat refused to swallow.

Now Max Brandon stood on a dune of restless ocher dust, watching the coming of another stor

It rolled crouching across the uneasy distances of the desert, touched blood-red above by the

sun of Mars. Brandon heard the first faint keening of it above the thin whine of the eternal wiander across the dead sea bottoms.

Brandon's sharp-cut face, handsome with its sea-blue eyes and bronzed skin, and the thin

battle that enhanced rather than marred, creased into a grin.

"So the grave-robber is going to be buried instead this time," he whispered. The skirling win

ocher dust in his eyes and mouth, the gold-brown stubble of beard.

"All right," he said to the storm. "See if you can make me stay down." He waved a mocking h

and staggered down into the hollow. To himself, he said ironically, "There's no one here to s

act, Brandy. No pretty ladies, no interplanetary televisors. The storm doesn't care. And you'

to die, dead, just like ordinary mortals." His knees buckled under him, flung him headlong

stifling dust. The simplest thing to do would be just to lie there. Drowning in these Mar

bottoms was just like drowning in the sea. All you had to do was breathe. He thought of all t

that had foundered when there was water here, and how his bones would join theirs in the e

dust, blowing forever in the wandering wind.

His white grin flashed briefly. "I always said, Brandy, that you knew too much to take advice."

Everybody had advised him not to come. Jarthur, head of the Society for the Preservation of

Relics. Sylvia Eustace. And Dhu Kar of Venus. Jarthur wanted to put him in the Phobos m

looting, which was bad. Sylvia wanted to marry him, which was worse. And Dhu Kar,

competitor and deadliest enemy, wanted to get to the Lost Islands first, which was worst of all

"So I came," Brandon reflected. "Right in the middle of the stormy season. And here, appa

stay."

But he couldn't stay down. Something drove him up onto his feet again, something that wouldto what his reason was saying about its being no use.

He went on, part of the time on hands and knees, to nowhere, with the Martian desert-thirst

him like living fire, and the first red-dun veils of the storm blowing past him.

He began to see things in the clouds. Ships in full sail, the ancient high-prowed Martian gal

could hear the thrumming of their rigging, knowing with the last sane scrap of his mind that it

own blood drumming in his ears.

The wind screamed over him and the red dust rolled like water. It was dark, and the galleys ru


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faster and faster. They got clearer, so that he knew that he was going, and still he wouldn't lie

And then, through those fleeing phantom ships, he saw a wreck tossing. Her masts were gone,

canted, her high-flared bow thrust up in a last challenge to the wind. Max Brandon knew, bec

could see so clearly the wide-winged bird that made her figurehead, that he was almost de

dust-filled eyes lost even the phantom ships. He wondered distantly why he should imagine

among them. The wind hurled him on. He fell. And, driven by some blind, dogged stubbo

struggled up again. The wind flung him with spiteful viciousness against something. Somethin

Something hard and unmoving, in the heart of the restless Martian desert.

It hurt. He went down and would have stayed there, but for the stubborn thing that lashed him o

There was metal under his hands, singing with the impact of the storm. He looked up, forcing

to see. A deck slanted down to him, bare of everything but the stumps of broken masts.

He stared at the ship, not believing his sight. But his aching body told him it was there. He thu

ith his hand, and it rang thinly. It wasn't any use, really, because he had no water. But the th

had driven him kicked him now up over the broken rail and along the canting deck to the broain the stern.

Feeble and distant, his heart was pounding with excitement. A ship, sunk ages ago in the Sea o

sailing through the red clouds of the storm

It was impossible. He was delirious. But the closed door of the cabin was before him, and he

open it.

There was no catch.

He grew angry. He'd come this far. He wouldn't be balked. He drew himself erect, his taw

hipping in the storm, and roared at the door, commanding it to open.

It did. Max Brandon walked through, and it closed silently. There was soft light in the cabi

faint choking pungency. A table of Martian teak inlaid with gold stood in the center of a room

to the curve of the galley's stern, furnished in somber richness. A man sat in a carven chair be

table. He was fair and slight in a plain black robe, with no ornament but a curious band of gra

about his head, bearing the figure of a wide-winged bird.

His face was gentle, grave, rather young. Only in the strong lines about his mouth and the fat

darkness of his eyes was there any hint

Of what? Max Brandon, dying on his feet, knew that the man wasn't there. Simply wasn't, be

couldn't be.

He looked alive, but he was too rigid, and his eyes didn't wink. Didn't wink or move, starin

girl who sat facing him.

She was hardly more than a child, with the supple strength of a sleeping deer in the long line


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and the stamp of a burning, vital pride still on her clear-cut face.

She wore a short white tunic with a jeweled girdle, and the cloth was no whiter than her sk

eyes looked at the man, unconquered even in death. They were golden, those eyes, clear and

pure metal. Her hair grew low in a peak between them, swept back and down and hung rippl

her shoulders.

Max Brandon stared at it, swaying on his feet, feeling the blood swell and throb in his throat.

Her hair was blue.

Blue. The deep, living blue of an Earthly sea, with tints of cobalt in its ripples and the pale

distance where it caught the light. He followed it down across her white arms, and then he

shackles on her wrists. Her hands lay on the table, slim and strong, and on the thumb of the

as a ring with a dull-blue stone.

Brandon's brain burned with more than thirst.

"The Prira Cen!" he whispered, "The Blue Hairs, the oldest race of Mars. Half mythical. Thalmost extinct when the Sorcerers of the Lost Islands were the governing brain of the planet,

as forty thousand years ago!" A wave of blackness closed over him, as much from that sta

thought as from his desperate weakness. He fought it off, clinging to life for just that one instan

Something sparkled dully on the table, close by the arm of the man in black. A small, tran

bottle, filled with amber liquid. Somehow he crossed the deck. The bottle was sealed wi

curious substance. He struck the neck off against the table. A drop of the fluid splashed on his

tingled as though charged with a strong current, but Brandon was beyond caring. He drankstrong, burning and cooling all at once. Some of the madness died out of Brandon's eyes. He s

a moment looking at that beautiful, incredible, impossible girl with the sea-blue hair.

A racing bolt of flame went through him suddenly, a queer shivering agony that had a p

pleasure in it. He felt his mind rocking in its bed like an engine with a broken shaft, and th

as darkness and a great silence. He came to sprawled in a heap of dust. For a moment he tho

as back in the desert again. Then the madness that had happened swept back, and he got up, b

into utter darkness. The light mechanism must have failed at last.

Dust rose and choked him. He blundered into a corner of the table, and something fell beh

ith a dry, soft whoosh. He couldn't see the door at all. When he finally found it with his hand

as no catch. Blind panic shook him for a moment, until he remembered how he had got in.

incredulously, he shouted at the door.

"Open!"

It didn't budge. And Brandon stood in the darkness like a trapped rat. From somewher

unbidden, a thought came.


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"Set your hands on it and push. It will come open." He did. His palms barely touched the m

muscles had hardly gathered for the effort. The door broke from its hinges and fell with a thin

the deck.

Pale Martian daylight flooded the cabin. Brandon saw now that the cushions and hangi

crumbled to dust. The teakwood table still stood, but its grain was splitting and softening. The

black had vanished completely, save for the gray metal circlet that lay in a scatter of dust on th

Brandon knew now what had fallen behind him. His gaze darted to the woman, and h

contracted with a faint stab of pain.

There was only a naked skeleton, beautiful even now in its curved white perfection. The shac

blue stone of the thumb ring glinted dully on fleshless bones, the jeweled girdle burned a

splintered pelvis. That little puff of air he had let in must have done it. Whatever mechan

controlled the doorhe made a wild guess at some seleno-cell sensitive to thought currents

of lighthad gone with the rest. Remembering the faint pungent odor, he wondered if that h

anything to do with preserving the bodies.

The cabin appeared to be hermetically sealed. The metal of the ship was some unfamiliaincredibly strong to resist the ages of immersion on the sea floor, and the further ages of dryn

ind and rubbing sand. It was worn thin as paper under his fingers, but uncorroded. They

knowledge, those ancient scientists of the Lost Islands, that no one had ever found again. T

hy men lost their lives in the desert, hunting for them.

Brandon looked forward along the deck. The storm had nearly buried the ship again, but the w

the bird on the high prow still gleamed defiantly He grinned half derisively at the thick p

excitement beating in him. He was lionized as a dashing explorer, publicly cursed and

patronized by scientific men, the darling of wealthy collectorsall because of the archaetreasures he stole from under the noses of planetary governments.

All this gave him money and fame and adoring fans, mostly feminine. It gave him the continu

excitement of dancing on the edge of disaster. It gave him glamour and a gay flamboyant theatr

in all of which he reveled. But underneath all that was the something that drew him to

forgotten places and the lost and buried things. The poignant something that was real and sinc

that he didn't understand at all.

Only that he loved catching glimpses through the veil of time, finding the scraps of truth that lunder legends.

He went back into the cabin. The gray metal circlet he scooped out of the dust and set jauntil

gold-brown hair. He paused over the skeleton of the woman, reluctant to touch it, but he wan

girdle. He reached for it. And then, oddly, he took the dull-blue ring instead. He put it on

finger and was suddenly giddy. He gulped a food tablet and felt better. The woman's skele

fallen into grayish powder, broken by his slight touch.

He picked the girdle out of it and clasped it around his lean waist and turned to search the cabi


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There were chests of scrolls acid-etched on thin metal that blackened and flaked as he looked a

The letters he did glimpse were older than any he had ever seen.

There were instruments and gadgets of utterly inexplicable design, far too many to carry. Th

ones were ruined, anyway. He stuffed a few of the more enduring into his pockets and went ou

At the broken door he paused with a small, unpleasant shiver. To break down a door sim

touching it

Then he grinned. "Duck up, Brandy. This metal is so thin that a baby could knock holes in it."

As though in mocking answer, the port rail crumpled, sending a flood of red sand across the de

bird on the prow trembled, and for an instant Brandon thought it was going to fly.

It fell into the dust, and was buried.

He got away from there, and watched the ship die her final death in the dry red sea, And then

to himself:

"Now what? No water, precious little food, no idea of where I am. Speaking of water-"

That stuff in the bottle had certainly been potent. It had revived him like a shot of adrenalin. B

He was thirsty again.

He tried to ignore it, making his plans. He had thought he was near the Lost Islands when he

In fact, he'd landed because he thought he saw the outline of dry harbors and stone quays.

"But I didn't. And the position of the Lost Islands is only conjecture, anyway. No two au

agree."

He stood there, his scarred, handsome face twisted into a defiant grin that he knew was as ho

his stomach, the wide-winged bird on the gray circlet glittering above his forehead. Then he

himself to shrug jauntily and start off across the ocher sand.

Thirst grew in him with the arid touch of dust. The wind whined at him, and presently he voice in it. He knew it was delirium, and refused to listen.

The spurt of strength the strange amber fluid had given him drained away. He fell in the blow

and cursed it in a choking whisper. And the voice said:

"Strike it with your hand."

He did, because he thought it was his own desire speaking. He struck the side of the dune befo

eakly, with his doubled fist. There was a flash and a small thunderclap, and water ran. He c

in his cupped hands and drank like an animal, splashing himself, sobbing. Then he got up an


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staring at the wet place in the dust and his wet hands.

He backed off, slowly, his blue eyes widening and paling in a stricken face. He shuddered and

a hand across his damp beard.

"Merciful heavens!" he whispered. And gripped hard at the rising terror in him.

"The power isn't yours," said a gentle thought voice in his brain. "It's merely transmitted throu

body."

Brandon closed his eyes and held his clenched fists against his temples.

"No," he said. "I'll die decently of thirst if I have to. But I won't go mad."

"You're not mad," said the voice. "Don't be frightened." The last was faintly condescending

made Brandon angry. He threw his head back, so that he looked rather like the bird of prey

circlet.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "And where?"

"I am Tobul, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. My body is dust. But the essential frequen

activated that body are in you."

"That's witchcraft," said Brandon curtly, "and that's madness."

"Witchcraft to the ignorant," murmured the voice coolly. "Simple science to the learned.

essentially a matter of electrical frequencies, a consumption and emission of energy. There is

strange about charging metal with electrical life. Why should there be anything strange in charother substance with any other phase of the basic stuff of the universe?" Brandon looked

restless desert, tasted the dust on his tongue, listened to the wailing wind.

He pulled a hair from his tawny beard, and felt the hurt of it. He took a deep breath.

"All right," he said. "How did you get into me?"

But the voice whispered now, and not to him.

"Desolation," it said. "Death and desolation. The sea, the clouds, the strength and power of

gone. Is this truly Mars?" Max Brandon felt a wrenching sadness, go through him, and then

stab of fear, very faint, like things in a half-forgotten dream.

"I must get to Rhiannon," said the voice of Tobul. "At once." There was no emotion in

Brandon sensed an iron control, an almost barbarian strength.

"Rhiannon," he repeated. "I never heardYou said Tobul, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms?"

Brandon sat down, because his knees wouldn't hold him.


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"Rhiannon," he whispered. "That's the ancient name for the Lost Islands. And

'Lord of the Seven Kingdoms' was the title of the sorcerer-scientist who ruled half Mars, from

in Rhiannon."

Ancient things. Things deeply buried, nearly forgotten, clouded by superstition and legen

thousand years

Brandon sat still, just clinging to his sanity. At length he repeated quietly:

"How did you get into me?"

"When the ship sank, so suddenly that nothing could be done, I transferred my essential to a b

liquid prepared for the purposea faintly radioactive suspension medium. Those were t

timesone went prepared.

"The collective frequencies that form my consciousness remained there unharmed, until you d

liquid. Fortunately it was not poisonous, and you gave me easy entry into a satisfactory h

picture of the man at whose side the bottle had been came back to Brandonthe fair, grave fthe impenetrable eyes. That man, dead forty thousand years.

Brandon ran his tongue over dry lips. "When are you going to get out of me?"

"Probably never. I should have to build another body, and the secret of that is known o

Brandon!"

It was as though a hand gripped his brain. The impact of that will was terrifying. Brandon

mind stripped naked, probed and searched and shaken, and then dropped,

"Her jeweled girdle he took," murmured Tobul, "and my circlet, and some instruments. The

only metal and jewellook at your hands!" Brandon looked, raging, but unable to help himsel

"The blue ring, Brandon, that you took from her thumb, is it there?" It glinted dully in the sun.

looked at it and said simply: "I don't understand. What ring?"

Tobul whispered: "His eyes don't see, he has no memory. Yet I can't be sure. I was faint w

effort of breaking the door, after so many centuries of quiescence. She may have blanked hiBut it's a chance I must take.

"Brandon, we go to Rhiannon."

Brandon got up, and there was something ominous in the set of his broad shoulders.

"Just a minute," he said evenly. "I want to find the Lost Islands, too. This possession busines

fascinating angles, I'll admit, so I'm trying to be tolerant of you. But I won't be ordered about."

"Take the instrument out of your left-hand pocket and look at it." Tobul's voice was utterly


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emotion.

"Do you hear me, Tobul? I won't have the privacy of my mind invaded. I won't be ordered"

He stopped. Again the hand of that iron will closed on his brain. The sheer calm strength of it

him, as though he had been an ant trying to stem an avalanche.

He fought, until sweat ran down the channels of his face and his lean body ached, fought to k

hand from reaching into his pocket for the instrument.

But the dark iron power of Tobul's mind rolled in on him, wrapped and crushed and smothe

ith a slow, patient ease.

Trudging over the ocher waste, following the mysterious, quivering needle in Tobul's instrume

Brandon still could grin.

"Brandy, Brandy," he murmured. "I always said drinking would get you into trouble!"

Two chill Martian nights passed, and two days. Brandon got used to drawing water from the da blow of his fist. It pleased him, like a small boy with a firecracker.

Tobul, in a rare fit of communicativeness, said it was simply a matter of releasing mental

hich caused oxygen and hydrogen to unite from the air. The blow was only a means of direc

mental concentration. The Lord of the Seven Kingdoms had withdrawn himself utterly. Bran

no discomfort, nothing different from his usual tough health. Only when he tried to diso

pointing of the compass, he was forced back to obedience. It galled him, but there was no

could do. It was terrible to think of living out his life as host for a parasitic intelligence. It o

his pride, his individuality.

And yet, to have contact with a mind forty thousand years old; to be taken to the Lost Is

Rhiannon, the greatest archaeological mystery of Mars

He asked about the compass. Tobul answered absently.

"It obeys a directional impulse from the vault." And then, even more distantly: "The vaul

there, safe, in all this." For a fleeting instant, through his own excitement at the mention of

Brandon caught the unguarded sorrow of Tobul, looking through an alien's eyes at the wmummy of his world.

More and more, as he accustomed himself to his strange condition, Brandon's mind went bac

girl with blue hair, sitting proud in her shackles across from Tobul.

"Who was she?" he asked.

The leashed fury of Tobul's answer startled him.

"The most dangerous creature on Mars. In a short time I should have destroyed her. But, som


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her mind lives as mine does, and defies meBrandon! Go on!"

But Brandon stood still, with a curious chilly crinkle to his spine.

"Sorry," he said. "But the compass is shot." Tobul's armor dropped, then, for an instant. Bran

hat a lost planet must feel, torn from its sun. He never forgot it.

"Kymra! Somehow, she has gone before meGo on, Brandon!" Brandon shrugged and went.

ell die walking as sitting," he said. "It may not be Kymra of the Prira Cen, though. It may

plain Dhu Kar of Venus, which is worse!"

And then, just before the swift sunset, a flier came droning low over the ocher sand, swinging

circles, searching.

Brandon danced like a madman on the top of a dune, obeying Tobul's command as well as h

urge. The flier came down.

A tall, slender figure in grease-stained flying togs leaped from the port and ran toward him in

of dust.

"Brandy!" yelled a clear voice. "Brandy, you idiot!"

"Good Lord!" said Brandon. "Sylvia." She swept into his arms, kissed him, cursed him, an

him all at once.

"Are you all right? What happened? I've been hunting for three days." He helped her off and

into her eager gamin face, framed in a perpetually tousled mop of curly black hair, set with

sea-blue and adventurous as his own, and smudged slightly with grease.

"Syl," he said, "for once I'm glad to see you."

"Some day," she grinned back, "you'll realize my sterling worth and marry me. Then I shan't

fight mom about being a glamour girl, and pop about you being a bandit hunting the Eustace cas

"And I won't be able to rob graves in peace" She was suddenly pressed against him, grip

arms with painful fingers, making choking, sounds at his shoulder.

"Oh, Brandy," she whispered. "I thought you were dead." Tobul spoke harshly in Brandon

"Hurry. Get into the flier. We'll try to find Rhiannon from the air. Hurry!"

Brandon was apprehensive about that, because of the compass suddenly going dead. If Kymr

Blue Hair was really there ahead of them, it meant trouble for Tobul, which meant trouble f

Brandon, and, consequently, for Sylvia.

He hesitated, and Sylvia said, "Brandy, you'd better give up hunting for the Lost Islands. J

hopping mad, because you know what relics from there would mean to Mars, and Dhu Kar"


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"Dhu Kar?" snapped Brandon.

"He left the day after you did, as soon as he found out. And Jarthur went storming off with a b

policemen, to look for both of you. Of course," she added hopefully, "they may have got l

sandstorm." Brandon shook his head. "It's a big desert, and they may not have been fools like m

too far away from my ship."

If it was Dhu Kar who had broken into the vault at Rhiannon, that meant trouble, too. The V

played for keeps. Brandon had skirmished with him before, and he knew.

And yet, if he could help it, he wasn't going to let that semi-human pirate from the Venus

swamps steal Rhiannon from him. He stood there, thinking these things, his profile hawk-cl

the wide-winged bird glittering above it, the red sunlight caught in his fair beard and shagg

looking rather like a Viking. And Sylvia Eustace, with a curiously puzzled look in her blue ey

the ring from Brandon's finger and put it on her own. Then she said calmly:

"Come on, Brandy. We're going to Rhiannon." He followed her, not noticing the ring. Tobul, g

silent inside him, seeing only through his eyes, knew nothing of it, either.

The flier was small, fast, lovingly worked over and expertly handled. Sylvia went directl

controls. Brandon scowled, trying to plot the most likely course, combining his own conjec

the position of the Lost Islands with the way shown by Tobul's compass.

Sylvia sent the ship hurtling upward. When he started to speak, she cut him short.

"I think I know the way."

He stared at her. "Nobody does. It's all guesswork."

"Well," she snapped, "can't I guess, too?" He shrugged and sat back in the padded seat. Sylv

boyish form, the despair of her society-loving mother, hunched over the controls. The flier s

ith the thrust of power from the rockets, and the thin, cold air screamed along the hull.

Sylvia always flew fast, but there was a tenseness about her now that was unlike her.

"We can't do much looking at this pace," he said mildly.

"I tell you, I've studied up on it and I know the way!" There was an imperious bugle note in h

that startled him.

Then she glanced at him. Just for an instant her eyes were puzzled and frightened and alt

Sylvia's. But that was gone in a flash, and the ship rushed on, racing the rising moons.

In the third hour before dawn, with little Phobos rushing ahead of them and Diemos a ball of c

overhead, Brandon saw a shadow more solid than the shifting dunes.

Sylvia put the ship down. "We're there," she said. Then she laughed and shook him by the sh


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and her blue eyes sparkled.

"Think of it, Brandy! The Lost Islands. And we'll see them together!"

"Yes," said Brandon, and the lines of his scarred brown face were deeper. He was thinking:

she knew the way." There came before him suddenly the picture of a reckless, vital face

unconquerable golden eyes, and hair like a living waterfall.

Tobul said softly: "I see what is in your mind. Kymra may have taken her, as I took you. I dare

chances. Kill her."

"No!"

Sylvia looked at him, startled. He gripped his seat with corded hands, and argued desperately.

"It wouldn't do any good! If Kymra is in Sylvia, she'd only go back intowherever she was be

"Into some inanimate thing, Brandon. Perhaps in that state she could be forced She w

helpless to move, as we both were in the ship. The cohesive frequencies of a disemintelligence undergo a violent change under solar bombardment, unless protected by some

matter."

"I won't!" whispered Brandon.

He clung to the seat, fighting the inexorable command of Tobul's mind. He looked at Sylvia

vital face, and his heartstrings knotted in him like the straining muscles of his body.

It was futile. Slowly he drew the small needle gun he always carried and slid the clip of pneedles into place. He raised it and aimed, at the girl who neither moved nor spoke.

He fired.

The needles vanished in midair with little bright spurts of flame. And Sylvia laughed,

"Tobul," she said, and the ringing bugle note that was not Sylvia's was in her voice again. "N

easily, Tobul! I'll fight you, just as I fought in the old days, to the last ditch!"

As though of its own volition, Brandon's voice came, gentle and strange to his ears, with a

barbaric iron under the velvet.

"That vault is all that is left to me of Mars, Kymra. It is mine by right of conquest and the b

people shed."

"Barbarian!" Sylvia tossed her head like a war horse scenting battle. "What is in that vault is

right of having built it, and the blood my people shed defending it! The secret of the things y

from us lies locked in my brain. The things of your own borrowed civilization you shall n

either.


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"This dusty shell is still Mars, and though my race is dead, its people are still mine. I'll not ha

misruled by a dog of a nomad, with only four centuries of borrowed culture behind him!"

Brandon felt a blind stab of rage through Tobul's guard, and some of the velvet sloughed aw

the iron ring in his voice.

"Borrowed or not, I have the knowledge. The need to rule is as strong in me as it is in you, w

the Prira Cen!

"Your people were soft with age and culture. You conquered us, yes, because you knew mo

our blood was strong. We took what we wanted and used it against you, and we were not bo

scruples about blood-letting!

"I'm beginning to find myself again. From what I have taken from this man's mind, I see th

needs new rule, new strength, the knowledge that I can give it. Mars can live again. But in m

Kymra! The way of strength and manhood."

"The way of stupid, blundering beasts," said Sylvia, her voice deep with some powerful e

"You slaughtered the Prira Cen, the kindliest, wisest, gentlest race on Mars, because yo

ealous of our knowledge. You called it 'foreign domination,' though we never killed a man

people, and did you more good in ten years than you yourselves could have done in a century.

"Because we kept our race pure, you were jealous of us. Because we kept the secret of

deadly weapon, you feared us, though we did it for your own protection."

"We crushed you without it," said Tobul.

"Only because we waited, not wanting to destroy you, and were betrayed. You were takingRhiannon in chains, Tobul, but I tell you that no torture you could devise could have forced m

the secret of that weapon. Nor," she added with deliberate malice, "another secret, which you

like now, but cannot have."

Tobul did not answer her. Silently in Brandon's mind he said, "Take the small tube from you

hand pocket."

The vise-grip of Tobul's will on his made even a pretense of resistance impossible. Brandon

the useless needle gun and did as he was told.

"She has nothing but the power of her mind," murmured Tobul. "She can't fight the strength

projector long. Fire, Brandon!" With some foreign knowledge, he pressed a stud. A faint b

light leaped out, splattering in blazing incandescence against the barrier of force Kymra h

around Sylvia's body.

It burned and blazed, and the force wall held stubbornly, and Sylvia's blue eyes stared at him

the fire.

"You, too, Brandy?" she said, and now the voice was her own. "She made me understand,


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flash. She can't hold out long. It's all so mad! Brandy, she's weakening. Brandy, can't

something!" He couldn't, though the sweat of agony needled his face. Out of some dim dist

sensed a growing heat and glare and thought it was from the clashing energies before him,

realized it was in the wrong direction. The stern plates of the cabin were glowing cherry-red.

Somehow he found his voice. "The fuel tanks!" he yelled. "Got to get out. Somebody's got a he

on us."

Miraculously, those two warring intelligences understood. The blazing battle of force broke hull plates paled

They ran. With all their strength they leaped through the port and pelted over the desert, trailin

shadows from the double moons. Light gravity and long legs took them barely out of danger. B

threw Sylvia flat just as the tanks let go. A thundering, howling wind swept over them with

all of dust, and a vast flame pillared up into the sky. For an incredibly long moment it painte

detail of the scene in wicked crimsonthe gaunt, worn shell of a volcanic cone dead and bu

unnumbered centuries and bared capriciously now by the restless sand, a few Cyclopean bl

Terellan marble cut to shapeless lumps by the passing years, tumbled about a gaping hole.

Directly in front of the hole was a big, fast, convertible spaceship. From it had come the heat b

"Dhu Kar," said Brandon, coughing dust.

"Why does this Dhu Kar wish to kill you?" asked Tobul.

"For the same reasons I'd like to kill him," returned Brandon grimly. "Except that he's a vand

swine, and I'm a very charming fellow. Wait a bit. You'll see."

He got up, and Sylvia, as usual, scrambled up before he could help her. Her face was pale an

frightened, but her blue eyes danced.

"I've always wanted real adventure," she said, with a shaky little laugh. "I'm getting it!"

They went toward the spaceship. And up out of the black pit, looking like a misshapen demo

light of the double moons, came a squat shape bearing a burdena radio-controlled robot car

Brandon felt the tendrils of Tobul's mind reaching out to search the mind of the man who blocay to the vault.

"He's looting my vault," whispered Tobul. "My vault, built and sealed against time forty th

years ago. This outland dog!"

"And what he can't carry away he'll destroy, partly to cover his tracks, mostly to keep anyo

from profiting." Brandon's tawny head came up. "Let me handle Dhu Kar myself."

"I can't afford to risk your body, Brandon." Brandon said angrily: "Look here, Tobul"


15/

The iron hand of Tobul's will closed on his mind. He shrugged, and went on in silence, Sylv

shoulder close to his.

Dhu Kar of Venus came out of the air lock of his ship. He loomed hugely in the shifting light. T

belly white of his face and hands gleamed sharply out of the dark furs he wore against the

chill. He was bareheaded, according to the custom of his people, his snowy hair intricately co

He held a needle gun in his hand, and his eyes were cold little chips of moonlight in his broa

face.

"Didn't know you had a woman aboard, Brandon," he said. His voice was harsh and slurring

recognize you, Miss Eustace. I'm glad you weren't harmed."

"He'll be happy to take you home, darling, for a small consideration. Say a million credits or s

Brandon was advancing slowly, poised on the balls of his feet. Dhu Kar grinned.

"How right you are, Brandon. For once you're bringing me business instead of getting it away.

can relax, Brandon. You won't have to worry about it."

He raised his gun slightly. Sylvia cried out and made a move toward Brandon. The gun hissed

The needles splattered harmlessly against a wall of force, just as Brandon's had done back in t

And Sylvia Eustace turned and ran.

"I'm not doing this, Brandy," she yelled, her long legs flashing through the dust. "Are you all rig

"All right!" he yelled back, and rushed after her, impelled by Tobul's furious command to gevault tunnel first.

Dhu Kar was staring from his gun to the running man in open-mouthed amazement. Then his j

hard. The girl didn't matterhe could catch her. But Brandon

If something was wrong with his gun, he'd try something else. He fumbled in a capacious poc

his powerful arm flexed.

The gas capsule burst just at Brandon's feet, Tobul, concentrating every effort on catching Kymcaught off guard. Before he could stop himself, Brandon had breathed enough of it to drop him

in the sand. He floundered away to windward, and realized that Tobul, associated as he w

Brandon's physical medium, was momentarily affected, too. Sylvia's flying form vanished into

mouth. Dhu Kar laughed and ran toward Brandon, very light and swift for such a big man. B

got to his feet and stood swaying, lost in a roaring mist, his hands raised blindly, waiting.

A pair of vast white hands came out of the darkness toward his throat. He caught them. He fo

hold them off, but his sinews were water. The hands got closer. There was a face behind the

broad and pale and contentedly smiling. Brandon's white teeth showed through his tawny begulped the clean desert air and scourged his lagging strength into his arms, to hold those hands


16/

But the stuff he'd breathed sent a black tide swirling through his brain. The hands and the smil

ere drowned in it.

The wide-winged bird on his circlet gleamed in the cold light of Diemos; the lines of his

handsome face were deep and strong. He dropped Dhu Kar's wrists.

The last desperate backlash of his strength went into his forward surge, the thrust of his hands

Kar's throat.

The Venusian laughed and flung him off. Brandon crumpled on the sand, and looked up at de

as grinning, the reckless grin that women sighed at on the televisor screens.

Some little mocking imp in his blacked-out brain whispered: "No audience, Brandy! You can q

But he didn't. And death came down in two white hands. And vanished, in a sudden, coruscat

of light.

Tobul's voice spoke, through the stifling darkness in his mind. The velvet was all gone from it

as clean, barbaric steel.

"I was affected only for an instant. I could have saved you this. But Kymra was gone the

anted to see how men fight today.

"That circlet you wear was the crown of my fathers, when they were nomads living on raide

and stolen grain. Keep it, Brandon. And believe me when I say I regret having to use your

shall try not to do it violence." Brandon felt a tingling fire sweep through him, and quite sudd

effects of the gas were gone. Some vibration Tobul freed, stimulating the natural processe

body to instantaneous reaction. He got up.

"Tobul," he said, "did you say that Kymra knew the secret of building a body for you?"

"Yes. But there is no way now of forcing her to do it. The girl fights well, for all she's a Blue H

"I'll find a way," said Brandon.

Tobul's voice came deep and strong in his brain.

"I admire you, Brandon. I wish to help you all I can. But this fight is between Kymra and me

of opposing races, opposing creeds. The will, the actual need to rule is inherent in both of us

need to breathe is in you. Not the will merely for power, but for the guidance of millions of p

hat we believe is a better way of life.

"We have different ways, Kymra and I. There is not room on Mars for both of them.

"We will go, Brandon. Down into the vault. Kymra is there ahead of me, but I still have some

One of us will not come out." Brandon went, down into the Stygian shadow of the tunnel. Somahead was Sylvia, and Kymra of the Prira Cen, and the powerful things in the vault he cou


17/

guess at.

Behind him, outside, was sleeping Mars, resigned to the slow advance of death, living out

days in peace.

Behind him, too, long after the tunnel roof had killed all sound from beyond, four ships came

down through the moonlight, drawn by the great pyre of Sylvia's flier.

Jarthur, president of the Society for the Preservation of Martian Relics, looked out at the wor

of the volcanoa tall, weedy man with sad Martian eyes and semi-military authority.

"These things are all we have left," he said to an assistant. "These bones and shards of our

And even these the outlanders strip from us." He flipped open the intership radio connection.

"Cover this area thoroughly. Issue orders that everyone found here is to be arrested. If they res

Anesthetic needles. No one is to be allowed to escape."

It was cold in the tunnel, and musty with the dead smell of time. It was dark, too, but Brandon

trouble finding his way. The square passageway, sheathed in metal of the same forgotten Tobul's ship, ran straight ahead and down.

Tobul explained it, answering Brandon's question.

"Those were troubled times. I knew that Rhiannon might be destroyed at any time. So I built th

sheathed in metal that will not corrode and is harder than the finest steel. It's air-tight, and fil

a preservative gasor was, before the Venusian broke in.

"In it I had placed the sum of our knowledge, science and arts and pleasures, and with them secrets we took from the Prira Cen but could not usethe machine of regeneration and the wea

"They're still here, waiting. They mean the rule of Mars." Presently Brandon came to massiv

doors that barred his way. The controls were locked from the inside. Tobul said:

"The projector, Brandon. The same one."

He pressed the stud. The faint beam of light focused on the door. The metal glowed, waver

crumbled away into fine powder.

"It upsets molecular cohesion, reducing the metal to fine particles of its original elements,

explained.

Brandon shuddered, thinking what would have happened to Sylvia. The beam ate and ate

door, crumbling a hole around the massive controls. It went through nearly a solid foot of me

ent dead.

"Age," snarled Tobul. "And all this time, Kymra" He broke off. "Put your hands in thBrandon."


18/2

He obeyed, remembering the cabin door on the ship and wondering if he'd be destroyed by

secret weapon as soon as he entered, or whether he'd live long enough to say goodbye to Sylvi

The weakened metal went through, under the power impulse from Tobul's brain. The massiv

swung back

Brandon stood frozen on the threshold.

The vault stretched away into gleaming distances filled with machines, with racks of meta

and objects of a million shapes and sizes. All the life and learning of ancient Mars, the sc

powers of the Sorcerers of Rhiannon, preserved by the foresight of one man.

But it wasn't that sight, tremendous as it was, that set the blood hammering into Brandon's th

rists.

Directly across from the door, as though brought in just before it was closed, was a huge glass

set in an intricate web of coils. These shimmered in a halo of light, at once subdued and fierce

Beneath the cabinet were several self-sealing metal containers. On the floor of it, inside, weand bowls of chemicals.

Above these, in the very center of the soft, deep glow, a shimmering thing stood, already

formulated.

Witch fires danced over the chemicals, whirling upward in a spiral of incandescence. As

painted by a rapid brush, line and color took shape

The fires died down, the glass door opened, and a girl stepped out. A tall, long-limbed girl, nthe moon and as white. She moved with a vital grace, and her eyes were like bits of livin

proud, unconquerable, meeting Brandon's own.

And her hair was blue, rippling down over her shoulders like the curl of a living wave ov

hite coral.

Brandon heard a long, quivering sigh through his mind, and Tobul said:

"Kymra."

The girl nodded and turned to a curious thing raised on a metal tripod. It seemed to be m

crystal prism forming the core of a helix, which was of some material midway between cry

metalpartially transparent, and made up of countless intricate facets.

The helix broke at its lower end into a score of shining strands which fanned out into a circle.

Sylvia Eustace spoke suddenly from where she stood, at one side of Kymra and a little behind

"What are you going to do?"


19/2

Kymra's voice was very grave when she answered. Her golden eyes watched Brandon with

regret.

"I am going to kill," she said quietly.

Her clear, muted voice rang softly from the metal vault, heavy with regret.

"For the first time one of the Prira Cen is going to take life willfully. I'm sorry, Max Brandon,

must be the innocent victimdoubly sorry because of what I have read in this girl's mind.

"But youand Iare less important than Mars." Tobul, speaking aloud through Brandon'

said harshly: "So you have had to come to my way at last."

She shook her head, that glorious shining hair like the forgotten sea that had lapped this island.

"No, Tobul. Because I take no pride in it, only sorrow. If my people had seen in time that th

deal with your barbarians as they would with a horde of wild beasts, humanely but firmly

hite shoulders shimmered through the shadowy blue.

"But they didn't," said Tobul, and his voice held a bitter satisfaction.

"You'll be all alone, Kymra, in an alien world."

"No. You're not the only one who looked ahead, Tobul! My seven wisest councilors took re

sensitized stones, which you brought here to this vault. They knew that I would live, as they do

the thought-impulses of their minds that led me here, after Dhu Kar broke your sending me

moving it.

"Their atomic patterns are inherent in the frequencies of their consciousness. That's the s

building bodies, Tobul. Given the consciousness and the necessary chemicals, that machine ca

an identical replica, as you see in me.

"Sylvia, my dear," she added gently, "it will be quite painless. If I had any other sure weapon

against Tobul's strength, I would, and then rebuild Brandon's body. But this force proj

consciousness into some unknown dimension, just as solar rays will. It cannot be recalle

hands dropped out of sight below the prism. Brandon could see the ripple of firm muscles al

arms as she went through some complicated operation.

"Goodbye, Tobul," she said softly. "Strange that we must end like this, in a world so differe

the one we knew."

The prism began to glow with some queer perversion of light that seemed rather luminous dar

ran along the facets of the helix, faster and faster, stranger, darker, more dazzling.

Brandon felt every drop of blood in him stop for a second, and then race on again, with the

that mad, black luminosity. A cold terror caught him, a thing that hadn't come at all when Dhhands were at his throat. He felt Tobul's being surge within him, fierce and rebellious and bit


20/

afraid, much. Only ragingly sad at his defeat, and the thought of his people being ruled by K

the Prira Cen.

"Negative energy," said Kymra's voice, ringing through the great vaulted rooms like a muted b

taps the power of the galactic wheel itself, turning against the cohesive force of space. En

close to the primal warp of creation that it needs only the slightest charge to push it over

negativethe opposite balance that everything possesses." The grave, sad voice beat

Brandon's ears.

"There is no defense against it, Tobul. All your force screens and projectors are worse than

They attract now, instead of repelling. Do you wonder we kept this weapon secret?"

The little threads of blackness spiraled out into a cone, and grew. Brandon's heart thundere

throat. The mocking devil in his brain laughed because the reckless grin was on his lips, pla

the audienceSylvia's stricken eyes.

He was sorry for Sylvia. She'd be alone now, in an alien world of wealth and decorum, that

could have taken her out of.

Alone, in an alien world

Brandon swallowed his heart. A sudden, desperate hope flared in him. Useless, but he had to

thing that had driven him through the desert made him try.

He started to cry out, "Kymra!" And Tobul's will clamped his tongue to silence.

"I will not beg for life," he said.

Things happened then, all at once. Sylvia made a long-legged leap forward, into the path

blackness that ribboned and twisted out from the helix. In a second it would have touched

Brandon, moving instinctively, so that Tobul had no time to catch his conscious thought and b

flung himself against her.

She went sprawling over out of harm's way. Kymra caught her breath sharply and started to m

projector to a new focus. And Brandon, looking up, cried suddenly:

"Jarthur!"

He stood there, the tall, thin Martian with the sad eyes. He had a needle gun in his hand, an

seven black-clad policemen just behind him. He stared, momentarily stunned, at the vault and

ith the blue hair cascading over her naked shoulders.

Kymra made a sharp movement. The dark light in the prism changed. The black cone unravel

back into the helix. Brandon's heart gave a wild shudder of relief. Kymra was reluctant

innocent lives. He scrambled up, sensing Tobul's dangerous alertness. Jarthur, forcing him

steadiness in spite of his amazement, said:


21/

"Max Brandon, you're under arrest."

Tobul acted with the swiftness of his barbarian ancestors. With anesthetic needles splatt

flames from his force shield, he charged into the middle of Jarthur's group.

The shock of Brandon's immunity demoralized them. Tobul's mind put forth tendrils of iron for

"Surround me," he said. "Walk forward," Brandon saw the look in Jarthur's eyes, midway

nightmare and reluctant acceptance of insanity. Then he obeyed. Tobul moved forward, surrou

a living shield.

Kymra stood irresolute behind the projector, reluctant even then to destroy more of her peop

then Sylvia moved.

She uncoiled from the floor with every ounce of her lithe strength, hurtling into Kymra. K

mental force shield must have been momentarily dispersed by the shock of Jarthur's entra

Tobul's sudden maneuver. Sylvia crashed into her, knocking her away from the projector. She

"Brandy! Do something!" But it was Tobul who flung away his unwilling protectors and gacontrol board behind the projector. Kymra rose, dignified and beautiful even then, standing be

regenerator.

"It's no use, Tobul," she said. "You can't use it." Brandon heard his voice say softly:

"You forgot the girl. She was where she could see your handsand she didn't blank her mind

she saw."

Tobul's hands moved over the intricate controls. Almost as an afterthought, he said to Jarthur, Brandon's mouth:

"You are no longer needed. Go."

Jarthur's sad eyes became furious.

"See here, Brandon! I don't know what kind of madness this isprobably some secret you'v

from this place. But you're through looting. I'm going to send you to Phobos if I die doing it!"

"You will," said Tobul calmly, and shrugged. "Please yourself." Kymra said steadily: "Yo

know how to control the force. Every living thing beyond its focus will be destroyed, and par

inanimate substance, before you can stop it even by smashing the projector."

"You said yourself, Kymra, that Mars is more important than any of us." The prism began

ith its queer, black light. And Brandon said desperately: "Tobul!"

"I'm sorry to cheat you of your body, Brandon. But this must be done." Black rage sudde

Brandon's mind, drowning out even the flashes of Jarthur's needles dying against the force scre


22/

"You fool!" he snarled. "Can't you see that the world has changed? The things you're fighti

don't exist anymore!"

"Silence, Brandon!"

The black threads were weaving themselves again around the focus of the projector, twis

toward Kymra of the Prira Cen. In a few seconds they'd blast her out of existence, and the reg

ith herand Brandon's only chance to get rid of Tobul and be a normal man again. H

foresee Tobul's mind moving to silence his own. His hands were free from the projector now.

With a characteristic flourish, he ripped the circlet from his head and held it up.

"By this crown, Tobul, I've earned the right to speak!" The mocking imp in Brandon

hispered: "Every inch the hero!" And behind it he could feel the struggle in Tobul's mind. It

an eternity before the quiet, curt answer came. "Speak, then." Brandon spoke, aloud, to K

much as to Tobul.

"You say that Mars is your first consideration, and I believe you. But you still live in the pa

you see that the war between Tobul's people and the Prira Cen is as dead as the dust of your b

"What right has either of you to rob Mars of the other? The two of you, working together as b

forces instead of enemies, could make Mars the greatest planet in the System. You could g

ater again, and the air she's losing, the courage and will to live that she's lost.

"You could bring her the knowledge of the Lost Islands and the Prira Cencomplete, not

forgotten fragments. Kymra's councilors are invaluable to all humanity. What right have you, T

destroy them?

"The world has changed. With each of you, the other is the only link to the world you knew. T

be no real companionship for you with anyone else.

"What human would mate with someone forty thousand years old? Yet you're both young. T

that, for a minute. To live for well-nigh endless years with no one to speak to, no understandin

awe and fear and perhaps hate?

"For Heaven's sake, Tobul, if you're the brave man, the great man you believe yourself to be, f

out and see the truth in it!" The little black threads wove out and out, and Kymra's eyes were gold, proud and steady.

Sylvia spoke up furiously. "He's right, you know. You're just fooling yourselves. You don't ca

you hurt as long as you don't have to share your power!"

"That's not true," said Kymra gently. And Tobul echoed: "No" Brandon felt Tobul's mind

into itself, thinking. For an instant his body was free from compulsion. He raised his foot and

projector crashing to the floor.

It shattered, became meaningless, shining fragments. But the fragments lay about a gaping hol


23/

the little black worms had gnawed. Jarthur had stopped the useless firing. His eyes were

bewildered, but his back was stubbornly straight.

"I don't understand," he said. "I may be only playing into your hands, Brandon. But if there a

beings from the past who can help Mars to live againI beg them both to do it."

Tobul whispered in Brandon's mind: "What is all this to you, Brandon? You, an Earthman."

He shrugged. "I'm a human being, too. And I think I'm seeing what I've always wanted to

thing that, subconsciously, has drawn me to hunt up the old, forgotten places. I'm seeing the pa

past that is as real as the future or the presentcome into its own."

"You're a looter, Brandon," said Jarthur harshly.

"But I've never destroyed anything. Oh, I'm not excusing myself. And I'm beginning to see the

my ways."

"Perhaps," said Tobul shrewdly, "because this looks more exciting?" Kymra said softly:

barbarian ancestors, Tobul, prided themselves on being honest with themselves. Let us be."

Brandon could feel the struggle that went on in Tobul's mind. It seemed to him that the whole u

had stopped breathing, waiting. And at last, reluctantly, Tobul said:

"Brandon speaks the truth. Much as I hate it, it is the truth. Blast you, Brandon, why did I give

crown to wear?"

"You may have it back." Brandon was suddenly weak, almost hysterical with relief. "I do

much"

"Much?"

"Well, my body has served as your draft animal. I'm giving up a profitable career of grave rob

order to act as your ambassador, your link between the past and the present"

"Ambassador!" said Kymra, turning her imperious, golden gaze on him. "Who has asked you?"

"Hm-m-m," said Brandon. "You'll need a personal diplomat, too. Can't expect love and kissone minute, after forty thousand yearsknow anybody who could do it better?"

Kymra looked at Brandon's handsome head cocked back, with the wide-winged bird glitterin

it and his white teeth gleaming. She laughed.

"You're mad, as well as insolent. ButTobul?"

"Why not? Kymra, you will restore my body, of course. But before I leave this Brandon,

something I want to doto tame him." Brandon's heart gave a swift, little jerk of apprehens

stammered:


24/

"What" But the iron grip of Tobul's will was on his mind. He found himself walking over to

He found himself taking her in his arms, and whispering something, and then

"So that," said Tobul, "is how it's done now. The world hasn't changed so much!"

[Mars] the Sorcerer of Rhiannon - Leigh Brackett

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